CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
4A ❚ FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2020 ❚ USA TODAY NEWS
Statement on a Pledge to Give an Award
A Dharma Assembly for the “Lifting the Pestle onto the Platform” to assess realization
power of Buddhist practitioners was held in the Grand Hall of Shakyamuni Buddha at the
Holy Miracles Temples on February 9, 2020. We have personally attended the Dharma
Assembly held for the exam, and also tried to lift the Supreme Holy Vajra Pestle. All
the people there, including strongmen, took turn to show their physical power. Yet no one
was able to lift the Supreme Holy Vajra Pestle at all.
To fulfil the criteria for “Lifting the Pestle onto the Platform,” one has to meet the
standard of lifting his base weight, and then surpass that standard. One who surpasses his
base weight standard by 10 levels is a Grand Master of Strength, World’s Strongest Man
for Lifting the Pestle onto the Platform. Throughout world history, the highest level that any
national-level or world-class strongmen, Great Bodhisattvas, or Tremendously Great Holy
Gurus in any countries have been able to attain was 30 levels above their own base weight
standard. On that day, the Holy Gurus set up a difficult situation that unexpectedly involved
His Holiness Dorje Chang Buddha III in the resolving of the conundrum. Due to such a
karmic condition, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III has set a world record after having lifted a
420-pound Vajra Pestle with one hand and held it for 13 seconds, surpassing His own base
weight standard by 56 levels. It is simply impossible for any human beings or Holy Gurus to
achieve that. That was a feat unprecedented in history. It clearly pointed to the fact that the
intrinsic quality of His Holiness the Buddha is that of a true Buddha.
Yet H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III said: “I am truly humbled. How could it be said that I
have the power of the greatest enlightened Buddha? I am just an ordinary person. Although
I did what I could to lift the Vajra Pestle, afterwards, my hand was sore, and my back was
sore. This morning when I got up, I could hardly lift 100 catties (approximately 110 pounds).
What does this say? I am simply an ordinary person just like everyone else. Many people
can surpass their own standards by 56 levels.”
However, all of us are of the opinion that except for a true Buddha, nobody else has
such holy corporeity and holy physical power. No persons or Holy Gurus are able to surpass
their base weight standards by 56 levels. We pledge that if anyone can lift a weight at the
base standard correlating to his own age and body weight, and further surpass their own
base standard by 56 levels to break the world record set by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III,
we will award US$20 million to such a person who can break such a record. People from
all over the world, regardless of their gender, race, or religious faith, are welcome to
participate, and all will be treated equally. Show your power to get this award. We will full
what we pledge and we are willing to undertake the legal liability!
All are welcome to come to the Holy Miracles Temple in California in the United States
and, with sincere respect and piety, lift the Supreme Holy Vajra Pestle that H. H. Dorje
Chang Buddha III lifted and held for 13 seconds. We wish that this will bring you
magnificentblessings and auspiciousness.Attention: We have officially entrusted Dharma Master Zhengrui Shi of the Holy
Miracles Temple in California, United States, as our entrusted representative in this
matter to handle all the procedures regarding “Lifting the Pestle onto the Platform.” If
anyone can lift the Pestle at a weight surpassing the base weight standard correlating
to his own age and body weight by 57 levels and hold it for 13 seconds to break the
world record set by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, then we will execute our pledge and
give out the award as per our statement above.Dharma Master Zhengrui Shi’s phone number: +1(626)476-
Holy Miracles Temple
Address: 1730 N. Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103, U.S.A.
Entrusted by: Yanping Jin, Leitat TsuiSigned and withngerprint by:
Jiangqu Jiangqiu (Yanping Jin)
Gewang Sangpu (Leitat Tsui)
February 17, 2020Our “Statement on a Pledge to Give an Award” has already been notarized by the Los Angeles County
Government and the Government of California. It is legally binding.Advertisementaged $595 million – on various threats
like anthrax or flu or botulism. But
could never properly prepare for the
kind of mass event now sickening tens
of thousands and killing hundreds.
The shortage of masks and other
supplies for the coronavirus response
reflects a federal failure to prepare for
medical emergencies, said Andrew
Sole, managing member of a company
with stakes in a producer of an antiviral
medication to combat smallpox. Sole
says he is upset that the stockpile
didn’t acquire more of the medication
he believes is needed.
“If COVID-19 tells us anything, it tells
us we are firmly unprepared for any bio-
logical outbreak, intentional or other-
wise,” Sole wrote in an email. “The gov-
ernment’s belief that it can simply order
up more drug(s) in a potential outbreak
has been proven as pure folly in that it
took them weeks to order, produce and
deliver millions of N95 masks.”
Health and Human Services officials
didn’t respond to requests for comment
late Thursday.
Priorities for stockpile spending
shift based on the perceptions of
current threats and their urgency, said
Deborah Levy, chair of epidemiology at
the University of Nebraska Medical
Center, who oversaw the stockpile as
acting division director under the CDC
in 2013-2014.
The further a public health event like
SARS or the H1N1 flu pandemic recedes
into history, the less money goes to re-
sponding to such threats, Levy said.
Spending decisions are made by a
group of experts at the Health and Hu-
man Services’ Public Health Emergency
Medical Countermeasures Enterprise
that include Homeland Security, the
CDC and the Department of Defense.
“There is never enough money there
for everything,” Levy said. “You need to
decide what the threat is, what the cost
is, what can be negotiated with compa-
nies.”
The problem is twofold, said Greg
Burel, director of the stockpile for more
than a decade before retiring in Janu-
ary. The stockpile has limited money,
and it must use it to buy costly treat-
ments that aren’t mass-manufactured
because the afflictions are so rare.
For example, its botulism antidotes
have a short shelf life and limited use.
Even though such outbreaks may hap-
pen only once in a generation – such as
a 2015 botulism poisoning that sick-
ened more than two dozen people and
killed one in Ohio – if the stockpile
doesn’t purchase them, they won’t get
produced.
“If we stop buying it, it’s not going to
be made,” Burel said. “And if it stopped
being made, you can’t get it made again
instantaneously if you need it.”
The stockpile’s budget reached a
high of $596 million in 2010, then
dropped year after year until reaching a
low of $477 million in 2013. Much of the
funding was restored the following
year, but the budget stayed flat at about
$575 million through 2018 – the same
year it was transferred from the CDC to
the Office of the Assistant Secretary for
Preparedness and Response.
The 2020 budget appropriation was
$705 million.
But the repository was never de-
signed to meet every need, Levy and
Burel said. It was meant to be a backup
plan for state and local health officials
to weather sporadic crises – and, in
particular, terrorist attacks, including
biological, chemical, or radiation.
“We have found ourselves in a per-
fect storm today in that we saw an im-
mediate cut-off of product that was
coming from outside the United
States,” Burel said, referring to the criti-
cally needed personal protective
equipment, including N95 masks.
“Secondly, the next thing that hap-
pened is, there were immediate surge
requirements where people tried to
stock up on this product as we started
to hear about coronavirus and cases
started to appear in advance. So that
was putting additional pressure on the
limited supply that is being made in the
United States.”
U.S. manufacturers began getting hit
with big orders from Asia in mid-Janu-
ary, said Dan Glucksman, public affairs
director for the International Safety
Equipment Association. Because they
had little inventory in warehouses, they
quickly began hiring and ramping up
production with triple shifts.
Companies are putting out product
as fast as they can, and he has not
heard of any materials shortages, he
said. “I think the crunch they’re under
is maintaining a three-shift force while
also making sure the workers them-
selves don’t get coronavirus.”
At Bullen Ultrasonics, a family-
owned company in Eaton, Ohio, that
produces glass wafers for pressure sen-
sors used in ventilators, workers are
rushing to try to make them in two
weeks when it usually takes eight.
“The U.S. government has come to
our customers and said: ‘We need you
to ramp up production. Anything you
have we’ll take,’” company President
Tim Beatty said.
The company anticipated a ventila-
tor shortage might be coming a few
months ago, he said, and was able to
stock up on the supplies it needed be-
forehand.
But the International Safety Equip-
ment Association began warning
stockpile managers of a mask shortage
in 2009, Glucksman said. When he’d
ask about it year after year, he said:
“The answer was, ‘We’re studying this.
We’re evaluating that.’ And, of course,
we now know they never did.”
The stockpile received special funds
to purchase N95 respirator masks be-fore the 2009 flu pandemic. It distrib-
uted 85 million of them, according to
Shirley Mabry, logistics branch chief at
the Division of Strategic National
Stockpile, in a presentation in 2015.
But afterward, it never fully replen-
ished its supply.
“Once we used it,” Burel said, “the
money was not there to rebuy it.”
Contributing: Dennis Wagner, USA
TODAY, and Katie Wedell, Erin Mans-
field and Doug Caruso, USA TODAY Net-
workStockpile
Continued from Page 1A
Brian Burkett is a machinist at Bullen Ultrasonics of Eaton, Ohio, which produces
glass wafers for pressure sensors used in ventilators. ERIC ALBRECHT“There is never enough money
there for everything. You need
to decide what the threat is,
what the cost is, what can be
negotiated with companies.”
Deborah Levy,
who oversaw the stockpile in 2013-said. “My daughter has a cough. That’s
worrisome. We’ve been together since
this started.”
As Dougherty talked, his blue mask
moved around his face. After each sen-
tence, he paused to press his thumbs
against the mask, molding the fabric
tightly to the curve of his nose.
For an hour, the line grew by ones and
twos. By 4 a.m., another car seemed to
join the line every minute. At 5 a.m., 101
cars sat in a row that stretched half a
mile south.
“I’ve been here every morning since
Friday, starting at 6,” said Safran Ishma-
el, 27, who drove 25 miles from her home
to arrive at the college at 2:30 a.m. Tues-
day. “I was coughing really bad, and I
had a fever of 101. But by the time I got
here, the line was wrapped all the way
around the block.”
Nancy Nunez works at a grocery
store in Bergen County. She loves her
customers, she said, but she thinks
they’ve made her sick. She arrived in
line in her battered Honda minivan at 4
a.m. and took her temperature — she
had a fever of 100.5 degrees. Then shePARAMUS, N.J. – The night was cold
and silent, and John Dougherty wasn’t
taking any more chances. He drove
slowly. When he arrived at the test site,
he pulled his white Honda minivan onto
the shoulder of the three-lane suburban
highway. He spun the key to kill the en-
gine. It was 2:55 a.m.
Testing wouldn’t begin for another
five hours. Dougherty would wait. Al-
most two weeks ago, his wife got sick.
They worried she had coronavirus, but
the first test came back negative. They
thought: Maybe it was just the flu.
Dougherty kept scrubbing the house
with disinfectant wipes. He still wore a
mask, but sometimes it hung loose
around his neck.
“I let my guard down,” said Dougher-
ty, 64. “I had to take care of her.”
Dougherty’s wife has been in the
hospital five days now. She is alive be-
cause a machine is forcing oxygen into
her lungs. She is alone, and no one may
visit.
Now Dougherty feels like he’s caught
the flu. The fever, the aches. Under fed-
eral rules, these symptoms qualify him
to get him tested for coronavirus.
His daughter Lauren, 19, has a cough.
Sitting in his car, Dougherty worried.
What if a cough isn’t enough? What if
living with two parents, both of whom
appear to have the virus, is not enough?
According to rules set up for the testing
site, Lauren Dougherty would not be
tested for coronavirus until she, too, de-
velops a fever and chest pains. Still,
John Dougherty wanted to try to get her
a test.
So on Tuesday, in the middle of the
night, he arrived at Bergen Community
College. Lauren, wearing pajamas, rode
in the back seat, as far away from her fa-
ther as she possibly could sit. Dougher-
ty’s plan: Beg the doctors to make an ex-
ception, and test them both.
“I can’t leave her home,” Doughertylooked around.
“This line is crazy!” said Nunez, of
Paterson. “It looks like something out of
a movie.”
Nunez and her family have impro-
vised. She spent seven days locked in
her bedroom. When she gets hungry,
she knocks on the door. Family mem-
bers bring her a plate of food, leaving it
on the floor. Nunez opens the door a
crack, takes the plate, and cleans the
floor where it sat with a Clorox wipe.
Every 30 seconds, Nunez fell into a
coughing fit. She worries her coughs will
spread the virus to her son, two daugh-
ters and grandson, all of whom live with
her.
“It’s scary!” Nunez said. “My mom is- I told her not to come over to my
house, no matter what.”
When John Dougherty finally arrived
at the front of the line, he wasn’t re-
quired to beg. He’s ill, he explained. His
wife of 36 years is living on a ventilator,
and his daughter has a cough. Would the
doctors please test her?
Lauren Dougherty won the lottery.
She got tested.
NJ residents camp out all night for an 8 a.m. test
At 5 a.m., 101 cars sat in a
row that was half a mile
Christopher Maag
The Bergen Record
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